crafty

April 13, 2011

I was hoping to go with a completely different color scheme downstairs but it's just not working. None of the blues are playing nice with our sofas, so it's back to the yellows and taupes.

I found this Laura Ashley color at Lowe's:

Deep Cowslip 4. You can actually see the paint chip on the wall under the mirror..it's a little darker and more saturated than what we currently have (the color here on my screen is more peach-y than the actual color chip).

April 10, 2011

Yeah, that's about the same look that the Dearest gave me when I told him of my plans. But, being the Dearest, he willingly promised his help with the cutting in (my LEAST favorite part of painting) and furniture moving.

However this was before I started doing crazy stuff like this:

pretend you don't see all the crap laying around in my poorly staged photo

Poor Dearest...he does NOT like half-completed projects and his eye starts twitching every time he walks by this wall. Not to mention I think he's heartily sick of me asking him about which color he likes!

Currently, we have a yellow/tan color on the walls, but I think if I'm going to repaint, we need to go a whole new direction. The big hurdle is our sofas- as you can see, they are brown leather and they're not going away any time soon so whatever color I pick needs to complement the brown. (I would sooooo love to have white slipcovered sofas because they are easier to decorate around but these leather ones are 10 years old and still look brand new so they stay)

Even though I LOVE LOVE LOVE strong colors (see the deep red wall in the photo? It's the wall that goes up our staircase...), I think I want to paint the walls a more neutral grey/blue and use accessories to bring in color. With that in mind, I painted all these swatches....my favorite three are the numbered ones. #1 is Behr's "Light French Grey", #2 is Benjamin Moore's "Woodlawn Blue" but mixed in Behr paints, and #3 is Sherwin Williams "Reward". What do you all think? Vote below!Free Blog Poll

And just for fun, here is a peek at Mr. Mean Owl, who I found at a thrift store for $5.....I might have to try some metallic paint on him because he gives me the heebie jeebies as is.

ETA: someone asked me if we were keeping the red wall...at this point, probably not! I just painted it about two years ago but I think we will need to repaint to the same color we pick for the living area...or maybe a slightly darker/lighter shade of that color. Also, all of our trim is white, as are the doors and window blinds. Here's another photo of the living room so you can see we have pale tile floors, too. (that carpet will probably go, and ignore the snake cage on the left side of the frame, that's gonna be moved! LOL)

March 28, 2011

So I was hanging out with my new boyfriend, Craig, the other day and found this adorable vintage chair for only $10:

Aside from the fact that the cane seat was busted out, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it! I even got a whole complementary layer of dust, spiderwbes and a few dead daddy-longlegs for my $10. The seller said this chair has been in her family for many years- owned by her Granny, mom and then passed on to her. She guessed it was probably at least sixty years old.

Look at this amazingly detailed wood work on the back and top...

This morning I gave the chair a quick dusting (bye-bye mummified daddy-longlegs) and started pulling out the left over caning:

Check out my awesome work bench- I know Bob Vila would love to own one like this.

After 30 minutes of clipping and pulling and tugging, all the caning was gone and the chair was ready for a new seat. I went to the local Lowes and asked the guy in the wood section what type of plywood I should use: 1/2 inch or 1/4 inch. He looked me up and down and asked, "So are a lot of BIG people going to be sitting in this chair?"

I explained that the chair was vintage, so a bit smaller than modern chairs, and that it wouldn't be used for seating very much...he laughed and said the 1/4 inch plywood would be fine. Then we had a 20 minute conversation about how vintage furniture often seems much smaller than new stuff and how all our grannies must have been tiny little things....Can I just say that I *heart* my local Lowes people? They are always super helpful and willing to spend lots of time answering my crazy questions!

So the next step is to cut out and upholster the chair seat. Here is the combination that I'm thinking of- the paint will go on the chair frame and the fabric will go on the seat:

What do you think? My other thoughts were to use this fabric and either leave the chair frame wood or paint it soft white....I'd love to hear your ideas!

March 20, 2011

It seems I'm on a decorating kick. After finishing our new coffee table and rearranging the living room, I realized that it had been YEARS since I had updated any of the decor in our home. That's mostly due to the fact that we had two small men running around underfoot. When your decorating style includes rubber baby bumpers on all the tables, Goldfish crackers crushed into the carpet, and plastic/unbreakable furniture, it seems a bit foolish to go out of your way to prettify things.

But the small men are growing up and it's now safe to leave a pair of scissors laying around without worrying that grubby boy hands will use them to make lace curtains out of silk drapes. I still wouldn't put glass items down low (these boys have an unholy love for super-bouncy balls in the house), but I think we are at the point where we can start putting pretty things out without having to worry about them getting gnawed/drooled on.

One of the places I'm trying to dress up a bit is our mantel. It's VERY plain unless it's Christmas time. Most of the year the mantel is completely bare. I thought a good place to start with the accessorizing would be candle holders. I found these Turned Wood Pillar Holders at Pottery Barn:

And these Calais Candleholders at Ballard Designs:

The only problem was the price...they were all between $30 and $50 a pop, OUCH!

Since I'm a cheap bastard and love me some DIY, I dragged Monkey Boy to the local Lowes and started wandering the woodworking aisle (remember that photo of MB I posted a few days ago?). I found table legs several different sizes and settled on these:

Country Pine 29 inch "traditional leg": $12

Ash 27 inch "french provincial leg": $16

I also grabbed a couple of these redwood fence caps (they were in the lumber/fencing aisle):

Then I went next door and grabbed some small 3 inch rounds of wood from Michael's (sorry no pic but you can find them in the craft wood aisle...mine were $1 each).

When we got home, I grabbed a bottle of Gorilla Glue and started gluing things together like a crazy woman. Here's one candle holder in progress. I turned the table leg upside down, glued the redwood fence cap to the base, and finally glued the small round to the top. (see my little green owl??? and also see the Dearest's trophy from his Las Vegas Hockey Tournament where he enjoyed himself [not sure I want to know all the hows and whys of THAT] for four days while I stayed home with the wild monkey boys and nursed an incipient sinus infection???? No, I'm not bitter at all! Hence the place of honor on our mantel!)

Ahem. Anyhew....here is the other candle holder, all glued together. I switched up the cap and little wood round so the holders wouldn't look too identical. Next I took them outside and donned my oh-so-sexy respirator for some spray painting:

(see that WIP in the background? There's a whole post coming up on that!)

Yes, I know I look like a dork but I like my brain cells intact and I can't hold my breath long enough to finish spray painting a whole project. If you don't have one of these repirators, GET ONE. They are the best ever- no worries about inhaling fumes and besides, it gives you the sexiest Darth Vader voice!

One quick coat of this to seal and prime the wood:

And two coats of Krylon "Ivory", plus a little distressing and glazing gave me these gorgeous knockoffs:

I love how the glaze settled into the nooks and crannies: So final tally: two knock off candle holders for approx. $28, compared to $29 for ONE from Ballard Designs...not too shabby! I guess that leaves me about $50 for the pillar candles!? ;)

March 16, 2011

Yesterday I went to the local Goodwill to drop off some shoes that the small men had outgrown. The shoes were mostly too small but in great condition (you know how little kids wear their shoes for like a week and then BOOM! growth spurt!). Since I had to go into the store to drop off the bag, I decided to take a peek at the homegoods aisle.

Now, I have been and out of thrift stores ALOT and I NEVER find anything interesting. It seems like lots of other bloggers are always posting about their incredible finds- $2.99 for a great chair, or 50 cents for a whole set of dishes. I never manage to find stuff like that- either our thrift stores get super picked over or the stuff I pick up is overpriced, even for a thrift store.

But yesterday I managed to find this little brass beauty:

It's a brass trivet about 8 inches tall and as soon as I spotted it, I had to have it. Luckily it was only $5 (still a bit overpriced for a thrift store in my opinion!). I took it home and decided it needed a new coat of spray paint. The brass was quite tarnished and aside from the fact that I HATE polishing stuff, we don't have any brassy colors in our house. So grabbed a can of Krylon in "Ivy Green" and this is what my owl looked like after three coats of paint:Isn't that MUCH better? And the little owl statue next to the trivet was found in the dollar bin at Tarjay. It was originally a brownish black color, but I like it a lot better with a couple of coats of "ivy leaf". These two owls are sitting on my mantle right now while I figure where to put them.

March 12, 2011

Every time the Dearest and small men go off to an Indian Guides overnight trip, I get some much-needed mommy time. I know a lot of mommies would go shopping or to the spa. What do I do?

I make tables! We have had a small round coffee table in our living room for many years, but I was getting tired of how rickety it was. Plus kids had a tendency to lean on the edges of the table, which usually meant everything got dumped on the floor and someone would be crying over the spilt food/drinks/legos (sometimes it was even the kid who knocked the table over).

So I've had it in mind to either buy or build a new coffee table, and when I found these plans over at Ana White's Knock Off Wood site, I knew it would be a perfect project to try out while the guys were all gone to Big Bear.

I took my printed out plans to the local big box store late on a Friday afternoon, hoping it wouldn't be too crowded so I could get most of the pieces cut there. Lucky for me there was a big storm blowing in because Lowes was DEAD. The workers were so bored that I eventually had six guys working with me- two to make the cuts, a couple to pick out the best wood, and two more to give me tons of tips and notes.

Once I got all the wood home, I put a tarp down in the middle of the living room floor, turned on HGTV for inspiration and got down to work. Ana's plans are GREAT. She gives you step-by-step instructions which makes building the table much easier.

I have never built anything this complicated from scratch before, but after about six hours (four on Friday night and two more Saturday morning) I had this:

Can you believe that I did it myself??? I can't!!!! I think the Dearest was a bit shocked when he got home and saw what I'd made. It's not perfect (ignore the screw that broke off and the gaps in the wood trim) but after a lot of wood putty, caulk, and sanding, it looks pretty good.

There was quite a bit of discussion over what color to paint it. I got comments 50/50 between red and espresso. We have a red wall on the staircase and some red accents in the living/kitchen so I decided to try red. What do you think?

The tops lift off and there is a ton of storage space in there. It will be a good spot for books/mags/toys....

I might spray paint these baskets to match a little better....or just get new baskets. But for now these work. I learned A LOT building this piece. The first lesson: building it was the easy part...finishing (sanding/priming/painting) was by far the hardest thing for me. I'm a bit impatient when it comes to finishing projects and I'm so NOT a perfectionist...but some things do need to be as close to perfect as possible. Like prepping furniture for painting! Let's just say this piece looks best from far away..!

Another lesson: brush painting furniture sucks. I used a foam mini roller for the flat parts of the piece, and a foam brush for the tricky bits. I had a really hard time making sure the finish was nice and smooth. The paint was "Black Currant" from Lowes. I got a quart in a flat finish since that was supposed to help with the brush marks, and I knew I was cover the whole thing with polyacrylic for protection anyways. Using the roller and brush took a long time and was super finagle-y. I think I might try spraypainting the whole piece in the future....

Lesson #3- go with tinted primer if you are painting your furniture a dark color. I originally used white primer, but switched to a brownish Valspar spraypaint primer that Lowes sells. It made a huge difference when I started painting- the darker primer made a much better base for the red paint.

Lesson #4- Dont' forget to paint the inside of your piece! I did and was bummed when I realized that I still needed to finish the cubbys under the lids. I ended up cheating and just spray painting them with the leftover primer.

I had a lot of fun creating this little coffee table and now I'm on a huge home-improvement kick! Next project: making over a Craigslist buffet find!

February 14, 2011

Valentine's Day = lots of cooking for me...check out these cute heart lollipops I made for the boys to give out:

I don't recall where I saw the idea, but it's basically two mini candy canes heated in a 350F oven till they *just* soften. Poke the lollipop stick into the base and use your fingers to very gently mold the stick in place. Let cool briefly, then fill with edible candy melts. Easy peasy! We used bookmarks from Living Locurto as tags, though I changed the pink bookmarks to blue per Monkey Boy's request (because boys can't give out pink bookmarks, dontcha know!).

For our Valentine's Day Dinner we decided to eat in. It's just too much trouble to go out and fight the crowds. So I made filet mignon + seared sea scallops served with rice and mushrooms/zukes tossed with butter and garlic. Super yum!

What did we have for dessert? Well check out my new kitchen gadget: a mini donut maker!This thing makes THE.CUTEST.DONUTS.EVAH. I used a recipe I found online and whipped up 20 donuts in about 20 minutes. A simple sugar glaze was the vehicle for lots of sprinkles...

Aren't they the most twee things?!? I'm dying to try some chocolate ones...or maybe plain with chocolate ganache....or chocolate with powdered sugar...Oh dear, I might have to buy some elastic waist pants!

January 21, 2011

We were in the grocery store a few days ago and the small men pestered me to buy a whole coconut. They really wanted to break one open and see what it looked like inside. Since the store had whole coconuts on sale for 89 cents a pound, we bought one and took it home. The Dearest helped break it open with a screw and a hammer.

We used the screw to poke a hole in one of the 'eyes', draining out nearly 12oz of fresh juice. Then we wrapped the coconut in a towel and each took a turn smacking it with a hammer. It was like our own little pinata! After a few good whacks, it broke open and we pulled out the 'meat' inside. The Dearest spent nearly half an hour cutting the meat into chunks, which we all nibbled on for the rest of the night.

Of course there was way more meat than we could finish so I decided to make a coconut cake. I found a yummy recipe here, and followed it to produce a delicious mini-coconut cake. A full sized cake sounded like too much so I used 6-inch round pans, cut the recipe in half and used a cream cheese frosting that I made with coconut milk, powdered sugar and coconut extract instead of vanilla extract.

The cake turned out so yummy! It's not too dense- the Dearest says it reminded him of angel cake in texture. And the cream cheese frosting was just right. With a cup of tea or coffee, this was fabulous!

And I'm loving my new mini cake pans....the smaller cake is easier to store and we manage to eat it all before it goes stale. I bought pans similar to these at my local craft store. They are 6 inches in diameter and 2 inches deep. They also had square mini pans and I might have to pick up a couple of those too. The mini-sized cakes are too cute! I can see that I will be making a lot of them in the future!

January 15, 2011

We celebrated MB's 6th birthday with a Perry-themed Pajama Party (Perry is the platypus from Phineus and Ferb). Somehow I had invited 13 kids....oops! We were able to entertain all the kids for two hours...we had the Wii set up so they could play Mario Cart upstairs. Downstairs we had pillow cases for them to draw on and paint (those were the party favors).... Or they could hang out and watch a movie and eat some sugary snacks.

Most of the kids went home around 8:30pm, but a few were invited to stay over night. The sleepover went pretty well- we managed to get the kids all asleep by 11:30pm (tho the Dearest did have to sit with them in the loft and use his "daddy voice" once or twice to quiet them down). And they even slept all the way through to 7am this morning without a peep!

Monkey Boy had specifically asked for a Perry-shaped cake and after finding this tutorial at Dabbled and decided to give it a try. My multi-talented friend Lanya came over to help, since I had never worked with fondant on a cake before. She showed me how to knead in the color (hmmm...actually I think she did all of that herself), and how thin to roll out the fondant. Here's our process and the finished result:

A slightly better photo of the finished cake (click for a bigger photo and notes): The kids loved it, especially Monkey Boy! He was super excited to "eat Perry"....working with the fondant wasn't as scary as I thought. Lanya even suggested a marshmallow based fondant that I actually liked the taste of (I'm not usually a fan of the regular fondant). So I might be making more cakes with fondant in the future.

All in all, a succesful party! And look at the 'day after':

This is what I found when I came downstairs around 4pm. Evidently, Monkey Boy told the Dearest "I'm not going to let you go to sleep, Dadda!" Oops!

December 21, 2010

Well, we who live in So.Cal. (the land of Perpetual Mild Weather) are waking up to the fourth consecutive day of rain. Yes, I know that some of you are rolling your eyes, "Rain? What? Here in <insert Midwestern or Eastern seaboard city here>, we shovel our weather! A little rain ain't gonna melt you!"

No, but give us our due: we've had more rain in the past week than is normal for us for entire winter. And our rainy season hasn't even officially started yet! December is generally a dry month- the rain arrives in late January or early February. This season it's obviously come early with a record-breaking vengence. Good for our water supplies and the roofers, but bad for a busy momma like me who has to keep two small men entertained while cooped up!

Luckily, they have been spending the rainy days building 'forts' in the family room. This involves stripping all the sheets and pillows off of every bed in the house, plus stealing the couch cushions, barstools, and my big metal background clamps (and tape!) to hold everything together.

They have also been making additions to our new Christmas village:

We went to a friend's house a few days ago and they were fascinated by the elaborate village scene there. Little Man even asked if "we could get some houses, too"....so when I saw these two buildings for 60% off at a local store, I snapped them up.

They are a vast improvement over the houses we had growing up; these new ones come with fancy lights and are incredibly detailed. The small men were super excited to set up our 'village'. We don't have any accessories so we used a wrinkled white sheet for the base and of course Little Man got started right away on making some Lego additions.

Do you see the minifigs standing at the door of the cabin? What about the guy wearing a space helmet, peeking in the window? Monkey Boy helped out by making a Lego wall and a cargo truck to carry lots more Lego guys. I'm sure there might be one or two more Lego additions before Christmas arrives!